Homemade Body Scrub

I live in a climate where we can see the blazing hot sun in the summer and mountains of snow in the winter. Currently, we are buried in snow. The school buses sometimes don’t run and recently we’ve even had the school closed. With the winter weather comes another unfortunate side-effect….winter skin. My body is itchy, dry and uncomfortable.

While I do occasionally slather on body lotion, it doesn’t take care of the already dried out skin on my body. My shins are flaky and no amount of lotion is going to fix that. A great solution for the wintertime skin is a homemade body scrub to gently exfoliate and hydrate your skin.

I made my scrub out of white sugar, coconut oil and a few drops of peppermint essential oil. I hear brown sugar is better for you, but my legs aren’t picky!

To start, find a container you would like to keep your scrub in. I had some pretty mason jars laying around that were the right size for my bathroom cupboard.

Fill the jar with the sugar of your choice and then put the sugar in a mixing bowl. If you are using liquid coconut oil (aka fractionated coconut oil), add enough so the mixture is saturated but not really runny. If you have hardened coconut oil you are going to need to melt it before adding it to your sugar. Then add a few drops of your favourite essential oil and put the mixture back into your mason jar.

When you are in the shower or bath, grab a scoopful of scrub and scrub your dry skin with it. You’ll notice that the sugar gets rid of the dry skin and the coconut oil gives you a layer of hydration. I generally do not use soap after applying the mixture because I don’t want to wash the oil away.